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Matt Calvert, who lives on Ferndale near Churchill Ave North, has been asked along with his neighbours to avoid using toilets and showers and to make use of the portable toilets installed in the area due to overwhelmed sewers.Wayne Cuddington/ Postmedia

But earlier this week, the City of Ottawa says that in one low-lying area of Westboro, the system was nearly full, and asked people near Churchill Avenue North not to flush their toilets, shower or use dishwashers.

Five portable toilets were set up along Ferndale Avenue.

The crisis was cleared Friday morning when the city announced people could resume washing and flushing. Just not all once in the beginning.

Why did it happen in the first place?

Michael Bartlett teaches civil engineering at Western University, and he said that yes, sewers can flow the wrong way. Ottawa has sewer “outfalls” that normally carry stormwater (rain and melted snow) into the nearby Ottawa River. This week, they are submerged, instead of being a metre or more above the river’s level.

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A volunteer tosses a sand bag onto the pile that continues to grow on Grandview Ave as the Ottawa River continues to rise with no let up for the next few days.Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia

Bartlett wrote out a sewer physics lesson for the people of Ottawa.

“The short answer is yes, sewers can reverse flow,” he said.

“Imagine you have two buckets and a hose, all containing water. If you put bucket A on a chair and bucket B on the floor, and the hose is full of water with one end in bucket A and the other end in bucket B, then the water flows from the higher bucket (A) to the lower bucket (B).”

“If you put bucket B on a table that is higher than the chair, then the flow reverses, flowing from the higher bucket (now B) to the lower bucket.”

“If the flood causes the water level at the sewer outlet to be at a higher elevation than the elevation of your basement toilet, then the contents of the full sewer can flow back through your basement toilet to your basement. If the sewer is not full, this won’t happen.

“There are things called ‘back flow valves’ designed to prevent this, but they aren’t universally used.”

Residents of the low-lying area were taking the don’t-flush order in stride.

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“It’s like camping,” said Matt Calvert. “It’s uncomfortable, it’s not exactly what you would prefer, but we moved everything up (from the basement) and we’re dry on our main level. We have about three inches of water in the basement right now, and if we were to put anything in the sewer system it’s just going to come back.”

He said water is coming up through the ground even though the homes are separated from the river by the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, which is high and dry.

Across the street, Shelley Page said this is a model for how people react to larger environmental issues such as climate change. “We all have to act together” to keep the water situation under control, she said. “But we can’t see inside people’s homes, so we don’t know what they are actually doing.”

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